Wednesday, 22 August 2012

Book Review - Three Sheets to the Wind

The first book that I read by Pete Brown was Hops and Glory, which I found funny and entertaining.

After I finished, I knew that I would be reading another of his, and when I saw Three Sheets to the Wind on sale and available for my Kobo, I bought it right away and am glad I did.

Meet Pete Brown: beer jounalist, beer drinker and author of an irreverent book about British beer, Man Walks Into A Pub. One day, Pete`s world is rocked when he discovers several countries produce, consume and celebrate beer far more than we Brits do. The Germans claim they make the best beer in the world, the Australians consider its consumption a patriotic duty, the Spanish regard lager as a trendy youth drink and the Japanese have built a skyscrapter in the shape of a foaming glass of their favourite brew. At home, meanwhile, people seem to be turning their back on the great British pint. What`s going on?

Obviously, the only way to find out was to on the biggest pub crawl ever. Drinking in more than three hundred bars, in twenty-seven towns, in thirteen different countries, on four different continents, Pete puts on a stone in weight and does irrecoverable damage to his health in the pursuit of saloon-bar enlightenment.

Hops and Glory was Brown's third book. Three Sheets to the Wind is his second. I seem to be working backwards. Like the first book I read of his, this one is very entertaining, humorous and an easy read. It was interesting to find the different drinking customs of various countries and how those customs has changed over the years.

He admits in the beginning that he is not an experienced traveler when he started and, in fact, disliked traveling, so it was fun to see him develop his traveling skills throughout the book, although he continually seemed to be barely getting placed on time and sometimes late to some big events.

The last chapters, when he returns to Barnsley, the English town he grew up up in was quite thoughtful. He speaks about what a perfect pub feels like ...

"It might look like an English or Irish pub, or it may think of itself as a bar. It might even be one of those pretend pubs you come across stuck deep inside big hotels - I found a perfect example in the corner of a terminal at Milwaukee airport (this made me excited as I will be fencing in Milwaukee in December) But underneath you can feel it's a pub. It's something to do with the role it plays. It's something to do with the smell. It's something about the staff, who are more relaxed and friendly than in any shop, bar or restaurant."

That is my thought too.

A very good book that makes me want to now read his first book, A Man Walks into a Pub, which means I will have read his series backwards. Backwards or forwards, or out of order, his books are fun reading.